Thursday, March 15, 2007TV Round-Up: LostPar AvionTwo weeks ago, we had a fun but (at the time) farily inconsequential episode about Hurley starting up the van and giving the island residents a much-needed victory and some hope. It was a change of pace from the rather bleak, mundane and heavy storylines with the Others and while it could have been fairly self-contained, instead we're seeing how it carries over to the beach residents here.

Interesting to see that Charlie starts the day, trying to embrace the hope. He's doing a good job until Desmond shows up and throws cold water on the day, saying Charlie should be out hunting instead of curled up on the beach with Claire. At first, we're not sure why but it becomes clearer when Claire sees a flock of seagulls go overhead--several of them tagged to study their migration patterns. If they can catch one and tie a note to it's leg, there may be a chance someone will come find them. She tries to find a way to do this, expecting Charlie to jump in and help, only to find he and Desmond are being wet blankets. Desmond even goes so far as to shoot near the trap to scare off the birds.

Eventually, we find out Desmond is doing all this to, once again, save Charlie from death. In this case, Charlie would have gone out onto some rocks, fallen into the ocean and died trying to get a bird to give to Claire. Which this brings up an interesting question--how many different ways did Desmond see Charlie's doom related to this mission. If he'd allowed Claire to catch the seagull in the trap, would that have ensured Charlie lived another day? Or was that mission destined to fail and thus push Charlie toward trying to please and help Claire? And while we saw Desmond go out onto the rocks to get the bird, how did he know that he hadn't created the situation by making Charlie and Claire fight? After all, we've seen the elaborate lengths Charlie will go to see Claire is happy.

Of course, that's the whole thing with potential time pardoxes....you can run around them for hours and never really wrap your head around them.

That said, I liked where the story took things. I liked that Desmond fesses up to Claire what he's doing (he kind of had to as he appears kind of stalker-like if he doesn't) and Charlie gets someone to share the burden of his impending doom with. I have a strange feeling we're setting Charlie up for a huge fall becuase he's becoming too content, happy and full of hope at this point. And one thing it never pays to be on Lost is happy for any extended period of time. Again, I've said before the island seems to give people what they need and they then shuffle off stage right. So, could it be that Charlie needed to be at peace, he is now and that will spell his exit from the island?

Meanwhile, the other plotline is just as compelling. Locke, Kate, Sayid, Rosseua and eye-patch man continue their trek to find the Other's barracks. They encounter what turns out to be a fancy electric fence and we find out two interesting Locke bits. One is that he kills eye-patch man to see what the fence does and that he knew the house was wired with C4 and would explode. Locke even took some of the C4 with them. At this point, Sayid doesn't trust Locke or his motives and with good reason. And suddenly, Locke is back in a huge way. I've always like the character, but I think he got a bit on the less interesting side with his blind faith in the Hatch last year. Now we've got the edgy Locke back, the one from season one who had his own agenda, kept secrets and you never quite knew exactly what his next move was. And with this arc, he's back. He still has the faith he showed last year as we see in his conversation about Eko's stick leading them to the house last week. But he's not as pure and noble as we got last year and I like that. I think freed of Jack, Locke has blossomed again as a character. We've seen Locke assert himself and be the kind of adventurer he dreamed of being back in his first flashback story. And it should be interesting to see if he reverts back a bit now that we've found Jack and Others.

Speaking of which, what does Locke want to find the Others so badly for? I'm curious about that.

And even the flashbacks worked well. I think we'd all figured Claire was Jack's half-sister, but it was nice of the producers to confirm it. I was not shocked to see Claire go into the hospital room to find Jack's dad there. And while the storyline followed an old cliched route, it was still entertaining enough to keep me interested. I have to admit, seeing the dark-haired Claire took a bit of getting used to...she looked very different. I wonder if we'll see this aspect of Claire again.

I did like how the flashbacks related to the main plot on the island--in this case we found out how Claire saw all those nature shows with her mother. It was a line that was sweet at first, but takes on a tragic, sour turn when we get the big revela.

And then the cliffhanger...just like in season one, I was left wanting more. Seeing Jack running toward them and it turns out to be he's playing football with the Others. Good spot to leave things and ensure I will be counting down days until I see the next installment.